Legendary “Airplane!” director David Zucker has a theory about why today’s movies are flopping so badly — and the folks in charge aren’t going to like it.
“The studios are very frightened people afraid to take risks,” the director told Align, stroking his chin. “I wrote an article … about the 9% rule. There’s 9% of people who just don’t have a sense of humor. There’s like zero sense of humor. So the studios are being guided by those people.”
‘There’s 9% of people who just don’t have a sense of humor.’
According to Zucker — whose cinematic pedigree includes comedies like “The Naked Gun,” “BASEketball,” and “Top Secret!” — cancel culture is still alive and well in the film biz, pushed by overly cautious studio brass.
Cracked rearview
“It’s like driving looking through the rearview mirror,” Zucker said — an attitude that leads to unfunny films that repackage old ideas with jokes that don’t land.
Zucker didn’t have to look far to find an example: the recent “The Naked Gun” reboot, which went ahead without his involvement.
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Blocked calls
Zucker recalled the confusion he felt when he learned Paramount had no intention of consulting him on “The Naked Gun” reboot, despite having pages upon pages of jokes already written. Instead, the studio went with “Family Guy” creator Seth MacFarlane, who came in and took over.
Zucker attempted to explained the debacle:
“I’m excluded from it. I called him. He didn’t return my calls, refused to meet with me. So I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on, but that’s Hollywood.”
Still he said MacFarlane did contact him after the movie finished production and spent “10 minutes just telling me how much he idolized [my movies], hard to get mad at a guy who keeps telling you what a genius you are.”
‘Painful’ viewing
Despite all the flattery, Zucker said he had no intentions of ever seeing the new version of “The Naked Gun,” recalling his experience watching “Airplane II: The Sequel,” with which he also had no involvement.
“If your daughter became a prostitute, would you go watch her work?” he asked. “So you know, it’s painful. It would be painful to sit through. It’s somebody else doing our movie, and they don’t know what they’re doing.”
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(L-R) Seth MacFarlane, Pamela Anderson, and Liam Neeson attend ‘The Naked Gun’ New York Premiere on July 28, 2025. Photo by Arturo Holmes/WireImage
In Zucker’s view, Hollywood’s risk-averse approach is especially obvious in comedies. “If you do a comedy that’s not funny, you can’t hide,” he noted, adding that the new “The Naked Gun” “must have been excruciating to sit through.”
It’s safe to say Zucker won’t be lining up for the upcoming “Spaceballs” reboot either. Not that he was a huge fan of the 1987 original, which he dismissed as “an attempt to copy ‘Airplane!'”
“You can’t do stuff that’s 10, 20 years old … puns [that] were fresh in 1982,” he laughed.
As for his own movies, Zucker said he hopes to advance the pun-filled, slapstick comedy genre he helped popularize — with his next project offering a fresh, humorous spin on film noir.
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